The Dish

Yesterday was a vital day of clarity for what has happened to America in the Bush presidency. It occurred in one of the more sycophantic interviews I’ve ever read by "journalist" Scott Hennen, of WDAY Hot Talk. Here’s the transcript, proudly posted on Cheney’s own website:

Q: I’ve had people call and say, please, let the Vice President know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we’re all for it, if it saves American lives. Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do agree. And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that’s been a very important tool that we’ve had to be able to secure the nation. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth, we’ve learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that. …

Q Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the Vice President "for torture." We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that.

So we waterboard but we don’t torture. It’s good to finally hear it from the vice-president’s mouth. But wait! We didn’t!

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney had confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique. "What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

Do they think we’re fools? (Yes.) Do they think the international community doesn’t know what this administration is up to? (They don’t care.) Does Cheney seriously believe that waterboarding is not the infliction of "severe mental or physical pain or suffering"? (No, he doesn’t.)

Vote Democrat or abstain.

(Depiction of a waterboarding from the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. According to Cheney, the Khmer Rouge’s tactics were a "no-brainer".)

Dan Savage suggests a new ad for Harold Ford. Ford should look in the camera and say:

The Republicans have accused me of being a heterosexual man. They’re implying that I have an interest in women. It would seem that today’s Republican Party is more comfortable with elected officials – male elected officials – who take an interest in teenage boys. Mark Foley is acceptable to Ken Mehlman’s GOP. Heterosexual men, it seems, are not.

Yes, it’s gay-baiting in Tennessee and Glenn Reynolds would get the vapors. (So would I.) But if Karl Rove were a Democrat, he’d do it in an instant. And Rich Lowry would call it effective.

Drumkeeran, Ireland, 11.32 am.

Can you reduce global warming all by yourself? Join the gang over at Slate.

This blogger has a very smart critique of my book:

Sullivan and many others misdiagnosed the disease back in the 1980s: like Margaret Thatcher, they thought that there was no such thing as society, identified liberalism with socialism, and concluded that everything apart from conservatism should be flushed down the drain. What we can now see is that conservatism without liberalism cannot stand: it is too easily warped by the forces of reaction, just as it has been for the last two hundred years.

The challenge is simply this: how do we restore the creative balance between liberalism and conservatism: between compassion and prudence, between idealism and skepticism, between inventing the future and learning from history? Andrew Sullivan has grasped part of this.

I don’t actually disagree with this general analysis. Oakeshott’s genius was in understanding that society requires both impulses to function correctly: what he called "civil association" (involving individualism, skepticism and prudence) and "enterprise association" (suggesting collectivism, compassion and idealism). But Oakeshott’s sympathies in the middle of the twentieth century – after the horrors of fascism, the threat of communism, and the suffocation of big government liberalism – was with civil association. My own sympathies right now are the same – but, for me, the great threat to civil association is collectivist fundamentalism, both at home and abroad. Even worse, at home, this collectivist fundamentalism is calling itself conservative. Hence my distress.

The book is simply an attempt to remedy that by reminding conservatives of something some of them have forgotten: that conservatives have historically been much more leery of enterprise association than civil association. And in this administration, we have one of the most controlling, certain and dangerous manifestations of that tendency since Nixon.

And I might add that this balancing act as a whole – sometimes favoring reformed liberalism, sometimes favoring chastened conservatism – might itself be called conservative in a philosophical sense because it rests on a prudential judgment as to what is right at any particular moment in a particular time and place. I.e. it is not a fixed ideology. It is about prudence or practical judgment. Which is, at root, a conservative insight.

A reader writes:

Watching Senator Barack Obama on Meet the Press last Sunday, I suddenly understood how so many people felt about Robert Kennedy in 1967 and 1968.  Here is an enormously talented political figure with the capacity to inspire Americans and remind us of why America is the world’s hope. Yet Obama, like Robert Kennedy in 1968, is a freshman senator for whom convention wisdom holds that a presidential run should be another cycle away.  Many of Robert Kennedy’s advisors pleaded for him to wait until 1972, when the field would be clear for him.  I have no doubt that Sen. Obama has advisors today who are counseling him to wait until 2012, by which time the Democratic party will be cleared of Clintons seeking the presidency (assuming, of course, that Hilary runs and loses in 2008).

Robert Kennedy died before I was born, but he is my political hero because of his capacity for growth, because of his idealism, because of his toughness, and not the least because he chose to run for the presidency when it was difficult rather than preordained.  He heeded the call to run at a time when our country was mired in an ill-conceived and and badly executed war.  He ran for the nomination against a titan of the party (Hubert Humphrey) who had long been beloved by liberal party stalwarts but whose popularity had waned among among these activists (in Humphrey’s case, because of his service as LBJ’s vice-president).  RFK declared his candidacy at a time when Americans had come to distrust the words of the occupant of the Oval Office.  And when Kennedy finally decided to run for the presidency, he chose to appeal to the better angels of America’s nature.

Robert Kennedy famously quoted George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’  I dream things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’"

Today I find myself hoping that Barack Obama will think of running for the presidency and say to himself, "Why not?"

But Kennedy had been attorney-general, he had a record as an aide to McCarthy, he’d been intimately involved in foreign policy in the Kennedy White House, and he’d been imbroiled in the civil rights movement for over five years. Obama has none of that experience. Not that I’m opposed to him. But if there’s one lesson I’ve learned these past few years is to be skeptical of potential leaders. I find Obama impressive. I have an open mind about him. But I want to know more – as I’m sure many others do as well.

(Photo: Scott Applewhite/AP.)

I think the president is fine with the New Jersey Supreme Court decision. Well, at least if he still believes this:

"I don’t think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that’s what a state chooses to do so. I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."

So it’s up to New Jersey’s legislature. And Bush would vote for civil unions. I can live with that. I’d prefer marriage equality, but within a another generation, I really don’t think it will even be a contentious issue.

An email controversy has erupted about the precise time-line of A-Ha’s "Take on Me" and CGI. I had no idea so many of you were so … well, here’s the Wikipedia entry that clears it all up. Meanwhile, I was actually right about the video in question:

A-Ha’s "Take On Me" video doesn’t use CGI. It’s an example of rotoscoping, an animation technique in which live-action footage is traced directly onto paper or cels. Max Fleischer developed the rotoscope around 1919 for his "Out of the Inkwell" cartoon series. Ralph Bakshi still uses it.

A reader writes:

Generally, I am not a huge fan of Lowry, but to characterize his brief piece on the TN ad as a "celebration" appears to me that you are picking a fight for the sake of picking one. It appeared to me that he was offering only his opinion as to what the effect of the ad may be. It may be unfortunate that people’s opinions, and votes, can be swayed by an idiotic ad. However, merely stating that it is one’s opinion that the ad will have that effect is not the cause of the problem.

Re-reading Lowry’s post, I think the reader has a point. I over-reacted, and apologize. But the term "scored a direct hit" is a little ambiguous when the ad was so vile. And there is a touch of glee in the phrase: "the controversy helped the ad get more play that it would otherwise, amplifying its effect." I’m pretty sure Rich Lowry backs Corker.

I’m on Tavis Smiley’s PBS show tonight, talking about the book. We had fun. I just finished an hour and a half of an inquisition on Hugh Hewitt’s show. His first question: "Are you a Christian?" "Nooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" But that’s roughly what it was. I asked Hewitt I think about a dozen times how he could be a Christian and support torture. He refused to answer. But it was a blast. Anyway, why not take being grilled by Cardinal Hewitt as an opportunity to show this: